


In the life

by theBelgravian



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abuse of a Minor, Co-Dependency, Co-dependent Relationship, Drowning, Historical AU, Kidlock, M/M, Medieval AU, Mentions of past child abuse, Murder, One-Shot, Scarring, Teenlock, Underage Relationship, horse-riding, whipping boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 22:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theBelgravian/pseuds/theBelgravian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock must be good to prevent his whipping boy, John, being punished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the life

**Author's Note:**

> written for fuckyeahteenlock's Historical AU contest

 

Cover by Grace of fuckyeahteenlock! 

 

 

John heard the screaming coming from Sherlock’s open window and knew at once what was coming for him.

“You can’t, milady!” Sherlock cried, voice rattling the stained-glass windows of his bedchamber at Greystone. “Pray, no!”

“Ten more strokes for your insolence!” Lady Greenridge yelled furiously, her blue eyes boring into her fourteen-year-old nephew without remorse. “Go and fetch them,” she screeched to the pretty young maid standing quaking in the corner of the door, the only witness to this (most recent tiff) between Lady Greenridge and Sherlock Holmes. The girl scurried off at once through the open door, her shoes little mice squeaking across the stones.

Sherlock threw his head back and sagged against the bookcase behind him, frustrated in his defeat. A bird chirped outside, horribly cheerful and normal. He considered. There was nothing for him to do now but wait for it to be over. If he were to say anything else he’d only make the situation worse. He HATED his aunt, standing by the four-poster bed huffing and red-faced.

“John will take your twenty strokes and then you will go and beg Lord Moriarty for forgiveness,” Lady Greenridge intoned, composing herself the more she spoke. Her voice rose angrily. “Accusing his son of drowning that poor village boy, when he clearly drowned on accident. For shame, Sherlock. You know how important it is for us to keep the peace with House Moriarty.” She sighed and ran a hand anxiously through her shiny dark hair. “How, HOW could you be so foolish, Sherlock?!”

Her nephew wasn’t listening to her, his eyes glazed over and body uselessly frozen. His mind ran backwards frantically: yesterday, the boy, the pond, footprints in the mud from a shoe that belonged to a noble: not himself, not John (they’d never gone there). Not his father because his father hadn’t been home for months. Not the Lord’s, who’d been with Lady Greenridge all day, James, James, James, so much smaller than Powers, but WHO ELSE? No NO ONE else had those shoes and so it had to have been him it had to IT HAD—

“Milady?” a voice spoke from the doorway. Sherlock’s head whipped up and over to the source of the voice and his face crumpled at once. I’m so sorry, John, I’m so, so sorry—

“Milady,” a gruff voice echoed John and the simpleton Silas lumbered forward, falling to one knee—he was always overly dramatic like that—and Sherlock saw the whip coiled in his hand and all the air went out of the chamber.

“Milady, pray let me take the lashes myself.” Sherlock begged, turning and falling to his knees as well.

Lady Greenridge ignored him, turning instead to Silas. The bird outside the window chirped again and Sherlock caught a glimpse of it flitting past the open window as the tension in the room rose.

As though to torture him further Sherlock had a sudden flashback to a few days ago—Lord and James Moriarty had not yet arrived, and he and John had been with their horses in the meadows below Greystone—when John had drawn him down and pressed him into an unguarded haystack, his blue eyes bright, his lips on Sherlock’s ever-white cheek and throat. Later, he had shown Sherlock his back and let him trace over the old scars with his fingers for hours, there, down in the green grass, feeling all the different textures that the canes and whips had made on John, all the many years of Sherlock’s badness gathered on his golden skin. He was fascinated, enthralled by them, and John had whispered in Sherlock’s ear that he loved him, despite it all.

But now John was unlacing his chemise, not looking at Sherlock, his handsome, clear face a mask and his blue eyes fixed on the stained-glass window opposite as he pulled the chemise off over his head. His hair caught the sunlight and glinted. He dropped the chemise on the wooden table. Sherlock shook violently, a whimper tearing itself from his childish throat. The whipping boy leant forward and placed his hands on the table for stability. You beautiful boy, you saint of perfection, bright star in my dark night, I love you, more than Jesus loved your namesake, forgive me, forgive me…

Sherlock felt himself pulled up to his feet by the inexorably disciplined Lady Greenridge and then Silas positioned himself behind John, raised the thick black whip high above his head, and brought it down hard.

Silas counted five (Sherlock had taught him how to count after he’d accidentally given John a lash too many once when they were both seven) before John showed any sign of pain, his knuckles whitening violently as he griped the table for support.

Don’t be sad, Sherlock, he thought when he heard Sherlock suppressing sobs behind him. I’d suffer worse to keep you in my life. “Six,” he heard, and a new line of fire burned up his back. He swayed slightly but kept his eyes fixed on the cut-glass saint in the window, taking strength from the saint’s look of benign compassion. He resolved not to make a sound. Sherlock wouldn’t bear it well if he cried.

“Eight.” The snap echoed around the enclosed room. A new line of fire right below the last one and John almost bit his tongue in half to keep from crying out.

“Nine.”

John felt hot drops of sweat form on his brow. Ten. Eleven. Silence except for the cruel snap of the whip. John’s back burned as it hadn’t done in years. Twelve. He struggled to keep his eyes open despite the pain, knowing that his resolve would break the moment he shut his eyes. Thirteen. He tried to hold a gasp in but it pushed its way out of his throat anyway.

Sherlock had shrunk into a tight ball on the bed, all his limbs drawn inward as though he were trying to make himself disappear. His cheeks, half-hidden in his arms, were pink and streaked with tears, and his fingernails pattered on the bed-frame as he was shook with silent, remorseful sobs, but his eyes never left John.

"Fourteen," Silas grunted, raising the whip again.

“That’s enough,” Lady Greenridge said suddenly, her voice strained. Silas lowered the whip slowly.

Sherlock looked around at his aunt, his eyes falling on her hand on the back of a chair and, despite his state of misery, his mind went flying: white knuckles, wide eyes, she’s unhappy, she likes John, doesn’t she? Much more than she likes me, certainly, so she hates having him whipped.

“Sherlock, I pray that I will not hear of you doing anything like this again,” Lady Greenridge said, not looking at either boy. “I expect you to come to me tonight at supper with news that you’ve apologized to Cabhan and James both.”

With that she left the chamber followed by Silas, who pulled the door closed behind him. A moment later John straightened up, his breathing unsteady but his face as impassive as it had been when he’d entered the room.

“Sherlock?” he said tentatively, looking around at the shaking form crumpled by the bed. “Can you help me, please?”

It was always like this: though John was the one who took the punishment, it was Sherlock who was made immobile by it. Having to take care of Sherlock when he was the one who’d been beaten annoyed John sometimes—but not this time.

In a moment Sherlock unfolded and stood up, crossing the chamber to John.

“What do you need?” Sherlock asked, resolutely wiping the tears from his cheeks.

“Just clean off my back, pray,” John answered steadily. “I cannot reach it myself.” He managed a laugh, lightening the mood of the room slightly.

Sherlock was across the chamber in a thrice, dipping a cloth in the basin of now-cold water that he’d forgotten to clean himself with that morning (as he unapologetically forgot to do every morning.) He turned to walk back to John and his brow was furrowed, a clear sign that he was trying his best to focus on present concerns.

Sherlock stood behind John and gripped his upper arm to steady the smaller boy. He swept the white linen gently between the livid red lines on his back.

“I’m so sorry, John,” he said as he worked. “I didn’t think my aunt would punish me for trying to expose a murderer.”

“Please, don’t apologize,” John insisted, then almost gave himself whiplash looking around. “A murderer? What… has someone been murdered?”

“Most definitely,” Sherlock answered, his hand progressing lower on John’s back, careful cleaning around the gaping lacerations. “That Powers boy down in the village who drowned, or rather, was drowned, killed, in fact, very cleverly by James, James Moriarty—”

John winced suddenly as Sherlock caught the corner of a lash with his cloth.

“Sorry!” Sherlock yelped, releasing John for a moment to stroke his bicep soothingly.

“It’s alright,” John said through gritted teeth.

Sherlock dropped a soft kiss on the side of John’s neck, guilt bubbling up in him for a compressed moment before he resumed his ministrations to John’s back.

“Powers was known in this village and the next for being able to swim for hours without rest,” Sherlock continued from his previous monologue. “He would never have drowned on his own. He was quite boastful about his talent, according to Molly Hooper. James would not have known that.” Sherlock paused to stroke John’s arm again before resuming. “Molly also told me that Powers startled Moriarty’s steed on his journey to Greystone and James was knocked off his horse and into a mud pool. And you know how James is,” Sherlock said disdainfully. “Proud to a fault. So, he took his revenge on Powers by forcing him to stay in the pool, at knifepoint, until he drowned. There!”

Sherlock tossed the bloodied cloth aside.

“Thank you,” John said, going to sit down on one of the chairs, sideways so that his back wasn’t touching the chair-back. “That was amazing, by the way.”

Sherlock slid the bolt on his door locked and then went and knelt on the floor between John’s legs. He stroked up John’s clothed thighs once, as anxious lines appeared on his face.

“I really did not think this would happen again,” he ventured finally. “I am so sorry.”

“It is all right, you,” John said, and he leaned down to kiss Sherlock’s forehead. “I’d with joy suffer a lashing a day if that was my condition for staying here with you. You make it quite worth the while.”

“I love you, John,” Sherlock murmured, leaning his face against John’s leg as the blond boy’s fingers stroked through his hair.

“Love you too, Sherlock,” John said, sighing. There was a pause and then he went on: “Are you going to go to make amends with Lord Moriarty?”

“I must,” Sherlock answered, still leaning his head against John’s thigh. “I dare not defy Lady Greenridge again. But will you come with me?”

Sherlock pulled one of John’s hands towards him and kissed his knuckles, then looked up at John beseechingly.

“Aye, I’ll go with you,” John answered, stroking his kissed hand over Sherlock’s cheek.

Sherlock bound up John’s back in strips of white cloth and then helped him re-dress. He was struck by how stoic John was throughout, not just bearing the pain but seeming to rise above it. In any other person Sherlock would have deduced the reason behind such behavior in a second but when it came to John, Golden, Impossible John, his mind was always a useless, noisy clutter.

John kept a careful distance from Sherlock when they walked out into the hallway and down towards the West Tower in which House Moriarty had taken up residence. They passed the stone courtyard in the center of the castle, where a servant was drawing water from the well. Sherlock had dressed in his finest black tunic and pantaloons, and a midnight blue cape that billowed like wings behind him when he walked. John wore his usual white, grimacing slightly in pain as he marched along behind Sherlock.

House Moriarty liked their strength to be known: Sherlock and John passed about ten men-at-arms on their way up to the lordly chambers. One of them stood to announce them as they entered Lord Moriarty’s study, with a smart click of his heels.

“Master Sherlock of House Holmes and Master John of House Watson.”

Lord Moriarty, standing in front of a large window, turned his head at the announcement but kept his back to the two boys. He was shorter than Sherlock and had long dark hair and John quite liked him, his congenial spirit and positive outlook being very like his own. James was another story.

Sherlock bowed low and John took a knee, his eyes fixed on the floor. James looked on from a corner of the chamber, gaze dark and unblinking.

“My lord,” Sherlock began in Gaelic, rising from his bow but keeping his eyes downcast. “I am here to offer my sincerest apologies for the wrongful accusation I laid to Master James yesterday. I hope that you will forgive my foolish mistake.”

John couldn’t help smiling when Sherlock said “sincerest.” He recognized the tone that Sherlock was using, the one that said he was lying through his teeth. It made him happy to know that Lord Moriarty probably wouldn’t recognize it.

“Aye, ‘twas,” Lord Moriarty replied. Luckily Sherlock and John had been well educated in Moriarty’s language and had no trouble understanding him.

“Wrongful, very wrongful of you to accuse my son of such a devilish crime,” he boomed, not troubling to keep his voice down. “You’re a little devil, Master Sherlock. You will kindly apologize to my son for your hurtful lies.”

Sherlock flushed and made an apology to James, much less eloquent than the one he’d made to his father, but fortunately Lord Moriarty made no further reprimand. James smirked at Sherlock and accepted his apology triumphantly. John cleared his throat, the smile dropping off his face as he stood and followed Sherlock out of the chamber with one last low bow to the Lord.

 

“Hateful worm,” John spat angrily when they were safely out of the West Tower. “He’ll burn in Hell for what he did, at least you can console yourself with that thought.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, too furious to speak. Instead he led John swiftly down to the stables and ordered their horses saddled, determined to have a ride before his inevitable rendezvous with his aunt at supper.

“Come with me?” he beseeched John, his eyes pleading as he gripped his saddle ready to swing himself up.

“Of course.”

The portcullis hadn’t finished rising before Sherlock’s Irene and John’s Mary were galloping thunderously through it and across the drawbridge, not stopping until they were several fields away from the stronghold. There, Sherlock reared up and slid off Irene, leaving her by a weeping willow. John arrived a few moments later and did the same with Mary.

He looked around carefully for witnesses before approaching Sherlock.

“He’ll be punished for what he did, Sherlock,” he said softly to Sherlock’s back.

Sherlock gave a stiff nod, the pink light of the sunset playing in his dark curls. John approached him slowly and laid a hand on the small of his back and Sherlock turned responsively (as John knew he’d do) into his embrace, leaning his head down as his arms circled carefully around John’s lashed back.

“Someday I’ll be older,” Sherlock said into John’s tunic. “And then people will have to listen to me. And no one will be allowed to hurt you ever again.”

John released Sherlock and looked at him, smiling before leaning up to kiss him quickly.

“I look forward to that day,” he murmured.

Sherlock looked up at the castle and his eyes landed on the window to his bedchamber. His grip around John tightened slightly. He looked forward to that day as well.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments, I love feedback!
> 
> and/or you can follow me at theshercrackofthecrop.tumblr.com


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